Open Source for America Announced

More than 70 organizations and individuals have joined to form a "unified voice" encouraging the U.S. government to support and participate in open source software.

In the announcement, David Thomas, principal with Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti and spokesman for the Open Source for America campaign says, "Open source software may not be a cure-all, but it could save billions of dollars, help foster innovation and empower our government to work smarter."

The new group will help serve as an advocacy group, coordinating open source communities to collaborate with the U.S. government in areas of free and open source software. The impressive list of founding members includes individuals and groups such as The Linux Foundation, Mozilla, and O'Reilly Publishing, the Linux Fund, Open Source Initiative, and Zenoss. The Board of Advisers includes Canonical's Mark Shuttleworth, Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly Publishing, and Stormy Peters of the Gnome Foundation.